This
cruising adventure began with a call from a friend inquiring if I would
be a mate aboard his 42-foot Grand Banks on a trip from Beaufort, North
Carolina, to South Florida. Having few pressing matters to attend to,
I agreed.

Now,
a ditch run is one of those peculiar events where people's opinions
seem to have no middle ground. Rarely have I met anyone, other than a
delivery captain, who is ambivalent about this particular excursion. When
forced to make this run, the sportfishing crowd, with their armada of
rocket launchers, gold-tipped Rupp `riggers, Guy Harvey T-shirts,
and 16-cylinder diesels, seem to see it the way the average tourist sees
a trip down I-95: The quicker one gets past Pedro's South of the
Border, the better. This impression is partly the result of the plethora
of signs along the ICW demanding, "Absolutely No Wake."

Then
there is the trawler crowd, traversing the waterway at roughly the equivalent
of a brisk walk. They're happy to just amble along, commenting on
this or that interesting piece of flotsam and generally trying to figure
out a way to keep doing this and pay the bills. For them a ditch run is
as close to doing nothing as humanly possible. Which is precisely the
reason they love it.

Although we fell
into this latter category, our departure from the bucolic port of Beaufort
was exciting, as is the beginning of any boat trip, involving an early
awakening, a beautiful morning sky, and an overheating port engine (a
problem that had plagued us for the better part of 200 miles until we
finally shimmed the water pump with a nickel). After three hours of tedious
work, we finally left the dock under a still-beautiful but now midafternoon
sky.

We
were headed south on a late-spring day, a time of year when every boater
who has wintered in South Florida is heading north, presumably intent
on mucking about in the fog banks of Maine's Mount Desert Island.
The neat thing about going "backwards" is that you get to
see so many boats, instead of constantly passing and being passed by the
same few.

Day
two found us heading down one of those narrow canals the ICW is famous
for. Not only was it scenic--Spanish moss bearding the trees, giving
it that tunnel-of-foliage look--it was also rather tight quarters,
thanks to a bottom that can go from 12 feet to two inches in the time
it takes to sip your morning coffee. In fact, it was so narrow we both
decided to put down our books and shut off the autopilot. I relinquished
the wheel and decided to do my morning inspection of the various components--primarily
checking to see if the nickel was still safely wedged in the water pump.
The last thing I remember seeing upon taking my leave from the bridge
was a tilted old sign, quaintly painted, advertising prop and shaft repair
two miles ahead.

My inspection was going
smoothly, and I was in the perfect position to hear the resounding THUMP
that emanated from the area of the running gear. I was back on the bridge
in record time, where I observed mon capitan taking the port engine out
of gear and shutting it down while intently eyeing the depthfinder. I
kept my eyes trained to our wake, hoping to see a floating log or an irritated
creature, but nothing--dead or alive--surfaced. When we restarted
the port engine and put it in gear, we were greeted with a disconcerting
vibration that coursed through our spinal columns and settled in our wallets.